Five Shoreline Public Schools students selected as National Merit Semifinalists

L-R: Shorewood Principal Bill Dunbar, Alexander Shapiro, 

Madeline Rouse, Leah Deobald and Julie Zhou.

Photo courtesy Shoreline Schools

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced five seniors in Shoreline Public Schools have been selected as 2018 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists.

Of the over 1.6 million students who entered the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as juniors, only 16,000 become semifinalists. The semifinalists represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors.

Shelby Gresch, Shorecrest
Photo courtesy Shoreline Schools

The Shoreline students selected for the prestigious honor are:

Leah Deobald (Shorewood), 

Shelby Gresch (Shorecrest), 

Madeline Rouse (Shorewood), 

Alexander Shapiro (Shorewood), 

Julie Zhou (Shorewood).

The students now have the opportunity to compete for Merit Scholarship awards by qualifying as a National Merit Finalist in February 2018.

About 7,500 Merit Scholarships worth more than $33 million will be awarded in this spring.

To become a Finalist, a Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student's earlier qualifying test performance.

Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments and potential for success in rigorous college studies.